Are you responsible for helping people work through conflict?
Do you manage important conversations between clients, employees, team members, volunteers or other people?
Do you want to improve your ability to facilitate conversations of consequence?
Do you want to learn to mediate or enhance your conflict resolution skills?
In this gold standard mediation training, learn how to support parties working through conflict or engaging in other important conversations in a different way. Our Understanding-Based model focuses on guiding parties to make knowing and informed choices together in a respectful manner. Highlights of our basic training, Working Creatively with Conflict, include:
Positive neutrality –supporting all parties without taking sides
The Loop of Understanding – enhancing understanding and empathy
Creative Options — innovating to meet differing needs and interests
A Foundation for the Future — building the groundwork for the parties to make effective and lasting decisions together now and in the future
Who Will Benefit From This Training?
Our participants include mediators, lawyers, collaborative professionals, business consultants, executive coaches, managers and supervisors, human resources professionals, ombuds-people, non-profit staff, and other people whose work will be enhanced by increased skills in conflict resolution. Participants report it is one of the top mediation programs they have taken.
What is the Format of the Training?
This hands-on in person training features briefings on the core skills of the Understanding Based Approach, followed by lively demonstrations and role-plays, all of which immerse participants in the learning. Realistic simulations, in which participants work through mediations from beginning to end, with coaching from our teachers, offer participants the chance to hone their skills and experience the emotional challenges faced by parties in dispute. Participants describe these different modes of learning and their interplay as enjoyable as they are engaging and rewarding.
March 22-26, 2023, Green Gulch CA
Is there Continuing Education Credit?
Legal: The Center for Understanding in Conflict is an accredited provider of California Continuing Legal Education by the State Bar of California. The Working Creatively with Conflict Training —appropriate for both newly admitted and experienced attorneys — will qualify for 32 participatory and 8 self study CA MCLE credit hours.
Venue
The training is at Green Gulch Farm, a Zen Center and working farm in Muir Beach, CA. The accommodations at Green Gulch are very unique and set in a beautiful, rustic location. Most participants stay in the Japanese-inspired Guest House. The gardens are lovely and the delicious vegetarian fare is served in a country style in a health conscious atmosphere. Three delicious vegetarian meals a day are provided, as well as all-day coffee, tea, and snack service. There is wireless internet available, but most cell phones do not have reception in Green Gulch proper. Guests have access to an office phone for emergencies. Participants should plan ahead for contact through the internet rather than by phone.
Who are the Trainers?
Catherine Conner
Catherine Conner has been a mediation and collaborative practice trainer since 2004. She is a frequent presenter at collaborative conferences and family law workshops. She authored Collaborative Practice Materials with Steven Neustadter and Margaret Anderson. Catherine Conner’s private practice focuses on family law alternate dispute resolution, including mediation, collaborative practice, and private judging. She graduated from the UC Berkeley School of Law, Boalt Hall in 1982 and is a founding partner of Conner, Lawrence, Rodney, Olhiser & Barrett, LLP. In 1992, Catherine became a Certified Family Law Specialist. She has been honored as the recipient of the Rex Sater Award for Excellence in Family Law, the Eureka award by Collaborative Practice California and was the 2018 honoree for Careers of Distinction. She was on the Board of Directors of the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals from 2007-2014 and served as the President in 2013.
Gary Friedman
Gary J. Friedman has been practicing law as a mediator with Mediation Law Offices in Mill Valley, California since 1976, integrating mediative principles into the practice of law and the resolution of legal disputes. Co-founder of the Center for Understanding in Conflict (formerly the Center for Mediation in Law), he has been teaching mediation since 1980. Prior to his work as a mediator, he practiced law as a trial lawyer with Friedman and Friedman in Bridgeport, Connecticut. After several years as an advocate, he sought a new approach to resolving disputes through increasing the participation of the parties in the resolution of their differences. At that time, he and his colleague, Jack Himmelstein, began to develop the Understanding-based model that is now practiced extensively in the United States and Europe. As one of the first lawyer mediators and a primary force in the current mediation movement, he has used this model to complete over one thousand mediations in the last two decades He has mediated numerous two-party and multi-party disputes in the commercial and non-profit realms, in the area of intellectual property, real estate, corporate, personnel, partnership formations and dissolutions, and family law.
Costs
The program training fee is $1,350 plus a fee for the facility, lodging, and meals as follows:
Private room* at Green Gulch: $825, for a total of $2,175
Shared double room at Green Gulch: $675, for a total of $2,025
Commuter for those not staying at Green Gulch: $325, for a total of $1,675
Please note that the bathrooms are shared at Green Gulch. You can find more details about accommodation at Green Gulch by clicking here.
A 5-10% discount on the registration fee is available for our CUC Connect members. Click here for more information.
A deposit of $500.00 is necessary to secure registration. (Reduction in fee available based on economic need.)
*There are a limited number of private rooms. After the available private rooms are reserved, we assign shared rooms.